Unveiling seamless climate information benefits for the wine sector: co-development of a case study

The wine industry is one of the agri-food sectors most highly influenced by climate variability and change at different timescales. In particular, integrating reliable and timely seasonal to decadal climate information in decision-making might help the wine sector better manage climate-related risks such as spring frost or water restrictions. This explains the recent interest of the wine industry in having climate information at these time scales. However, some of the challenges that prevent the users from uptake of climate information are the coarse resolution of the climate model outputs and the lack of coherence between the climate predictions from different sources (i.e., forecast systems at seasonal and decadal time scales). To produce coherent regional climate information for the wine industry, the suitability of different statistical downscaling methods to increase the resolution of user-relevant climate variables and indicators has been assessed for specific locations in Catalonia. Furthermore, a novel methodology for the temporal merging of seasonal and decadal predictions has been implemented to improve the accuracy of the relevant climate variables. This temporal merging method exploits the knowledge from the physical processes relevant to climate predictability at both seasonal and decadal time scales. The new scientific knowledge has been developed in the framework of the EU-funded project ASPECT (Adaptation-oriented Seamless Predictions of European ClimaTe). In this initiative, all the scientific methods are being co-developed in collaboration with representative stakeholders to ensure the climate information produced has actual value for the management of the vineyards and wineries, and the strategic planning for the wine market.